Top 7 Places Where Wildlife Enters Your Home
Critters like raccoons, squirrels, bats, snakes, rats, mice, skunks, opossums and more will enter your home in Northern Virginia, searching for safe and warm places to nest. Unfortunately, these critters can often create structural damage, rip out your insulation, leave their waste behind everywhere, and spread infectious diseases.
When removing nuisance wildlife from your property, it’s important to locate and seal off their entry points, as failing to do so leaves you open for re-infestation in the future. But where ARE these critters getting inside your home?
Well, we have the answers! The wildlife removal experts at Summit Wildlife Removal have come up with a list of seven main places where nuisance critters will enter your home in Northern Virginia:
1. Roof Vents and Gable Vents
Exploiting roof vents and gable vents is one of the most common ways that animals get inside your home in Northern Virginia. These exterior vents often give off warm, inviting air that attracts wildlife like bats, birds, and squirrels to nest in your attic space. You can protect these vulnerable areas of your home by installing metal mesh covers on the vents, which will keep the vents functioning optimally but prevent bats, birds, and squirrels from getting inside. In addition to mesh covers, screens and vent guards are also effective at keeping wildlife out. Summit Wildlife Removal offers metal mesh covers, screening, and vent guards for residential and commercial properties in Northern Virginia.
2. Chimneys
Your chimney often provides a perfect nesting site for critters like raccoons, squirrels, and birds. Chimneys provide safety and structure, and nuisance wildlife will often bring in dry, dead, and highly flammable organic material like grass and straw to build their nests. These critters can be excluded with a chimney cap, which is a device that seals off the chimney and prevents wildlife from getting inside, while allowing the chimney to release smoke and hot air as intended. If you need a chimney cap installed on your property in Northern Virginia, contact the experts at Summit Wildlife Removal.
3. Gaps Along Roof Edges and Soffits
If you have a weak roofline that’s not fortified, or a cracked/damaged soffit, this provides an easy access point for wildlife like raccoons and squirrels. Raccoons and squirrels will gnaw and claw at the tiniest cracks and gaps, widening them until they become a full on entry point that’s large enough for them to move through. Once they are inside, raccoons and squirrels will shred your insulation, leave their waste behind everywhere, and create fire hazards by chewing through wires. However, raccoons and squirrels can be excluded by repairing the fascia boards, adding drip-edge guards to the roofline, and reinforcing the soffit.
4. Attic Fan Openings
If your attic fan is unprotected, it can provide an extremely easy access point for common attic dwellers like bats, birds, flying squirrels, and more. Fan covers and wire mesh barriers can effectively keep out nuisance wildlife and prevent them from getting inside your home and damaging your insulation and attic structures.
5. Crawl Space Vents and Foundations
Closer to the ground, your unsealed crawl space vents and any cracks or gaps in your foundation can let in groundhogs, who may create structural instability in your home by burrowing underneath the foundation. Skunks will also den underneath porches, decks, and within crawl spaces, where they will spray their foul scent to mark their territory. Additionally, foundation gaps and unsealed crawl space vents can let in rat infestations, and when you have rats, snakes aren’t far behind. Summit Wildlife Removal can help, we can seal off your crawl space vents and repair any damage done to your foundation.
6. Gaps Around Pipes and Utility Lines
Gaps where pipes, AC units, cable lines and more enter your home can also provide an entry point for rats, mice, and the snakes hunting them. These entry points are often overlooked, and may be the culprit if you can’t find any other entry points on your property. Gaps around pipes and utility lines can let in these nuisance critters, and may be easily sealed off with pest-proof foam, copper mesh, or metal flashing.
7. Garage Doors and Door Thresholds
Small gaps underneath garage doors and door thresholds can let in smaller critters like mice, rats, and snakes. Raccoons may even squeeze themselves underneath a garage door if it means raiding your garbage can for food. Installing weatherstripping, threshold seals, and door sweeps can help keep these animals out of your home.
Why DIY May Not Be Enough
You might gravitate towards using DIY exclusion methods for these critters, but trusting a professional can yield longer lasting, more effective results. If you have an active wildlife problem or pest infestation on your property, it needs to be dealt with effectively before exclusion work can be done. If the removal of wildlife from your property isn’t done correctly, you could end up accidentally sealing a live animal inside the home. An untrained eye might also miss some of the entry points used by wildlife, rendering the exclusion work useless. Trusting a professional can ensure that all the animals are removed correctly and all the entry points are sealed and fortified.
Get Expert Wildlife Exclusion in Northern Virginia
If you need expert wildlife exclusion services in the Northern Virginia area, look no further than Summit Wildlife Removal. Our team of licensed wildlife removal experts have years of experience dealing with excluding nuisance wildlife in Northern Virginia, and you can rest assured that we will safely locate and remove them. Contact our team today to get started with a FREE estimate at 703-520-5868!
